CT Lawmakers Consider Prison Health Care Reform Bill

Connecticut lawmakers are weighing a sweeping bill to address what one legislator called “a crisis in our inmate medical care in the state,” following a series of government reports that exposed serious problems inside Department of Correction facilities.

House Bill 5567 is scheduled to go before the legislature’s Judiciary Committee Wednesday in Hartford. Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, said the bill grew out of concerns lawmakers raised in January after a Department of Correction audit uncovered widespread failures across the prison system. A subsequent report from the state Correction Ombuds added to the picture, documenting unsanitary living conditions, poor nutrition, delays in necessary medical care, and staffing shortages severe enough to confine incarcerated people to their cells for extended periods.

The bill takes aim at several of those failures at once.

One of its central provisions would expand the Correction Ombuds office by two positions: a patient advocate, who would be required to bring at least five years of senior health care leadership experience, and a mental health care clinician. Correction Ombuds DeVaughn Ward said Tuesday that the clinician position addresses a gap his office cannot currently fill.

Ward described a recurring problem in which people transferred between correctional facilities arrive at their new placement only to have prescriptions discontinued without explanation. “Somebody’s in one facility, they’re prescribed a certain medication, and then they arrive in this other facility, and then they’re cut off,” Ward said, adding that his office currently lacks the credentialed staff to contest those decisions.

A mental health clinician on staff would change that. The legislation would “allow my office to really have somebody who can objectively look at these charts and be able to speak with a certain level of authority when they’re looking at these charts and making these recommendations,” Ward said.

The bill also takes on medication distribution more broadly. The Department of Correction would be required to identify a list of “time-critical” medications and establish clear protocols for distributing them within specific time windows, even during a lockdown. A pilot program would allow people managing chronic conditions to self-administer their own medications, a step advocates say can reduce dangerous delays in treatment.

On the technology side, the department would be required to build an online system giving incarcerated people the ability to submit medical care requests and access their health records electronically. The bill would also prohibit denying a needed medical procedure for any “non-clinical reasons,” a provision aimed at preventing cost or administrative convenience from overriding medical necessity.

To measure progress, the department would receive a quarterly medical scorecard based on staffing levels and other metrics. The scorecard is designed to create accountability over time and give lawmakers and the public a clearer picture of whether conditions are actually improving.

The legislation arrives at a moment of growing pressure on the state to confront conditions inside its correctional facilities. The ombuds report that helped prompt the bill was notable for its specificity, cataloging not just medical failures but the texture of daily life for incarcerated people, including food quality that fell below acceptable nutritional standards. Those conditions have drawn attention from advocates and legislators who argue that the state has an obligation to maintain basic standards of care for people in its custody, regardless of their circumstances.

Stafstrom has been direct about the stakes. Describing the situation as a crisis is strong language for a legislative proceeding, but it reflects the weight of documentation that has accumulated across two separate government reports.

The Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday will give lawmakers their first formal opportunity to probe the details of the bill and hear from stakeholders. Whether the bill advances in its current form or gets reshaped through the committee process, its introduction signals that the General Assembly is no longer willing to treat the conditions inside Connecticut’s prisons as someone else’s problem.